Life is not necessarily easier with machines -- technology can be high maintenance -- but it can be more rewarding. We are already cyborgs, conjoined with our mobile phones, social-media identities, apps and automotive exoskeletons. An augmented self doesn't forget birthdays, always knows the best curry joint in town (as long as there's Wi-Fi), and can win Olympic medals after losing legs from a childhood disease.
As a robot designer, I'm not excited by the paradigm of a robot that will -- painstakingly -- imitate each of my capabilities so that I don't have to do anything for myself. I can already do the things I can do. Humans and machines have different capabilities, which is the reason why we can achieve more together.
Sending a robot to Mars makes sense, because they are better suited for the rigours of the trip. However, humans must manage the mission objectives and deal with unexpected situations. Human flexibility and creativity have no parallel in machines, but if we can rely on the capabilities of robots, extensions of mankind can touch the far ends of our solar system.
Social robotics takes this concept one step further. Humans are social creatures. As soon as we encounter a machine capable of motion, sensing and some modicum of volition, we place that machine into the social hierarchy of human relations. I have mourned the loss of a stolen laptop as if it were a loved one, and I bought my Nao robot Data, rather than return it to Aldebaran Robotics, the company I was working for at the time, because I had bonded with it in the way I might with a puppy. I'm now a doctoral researcher at Carnegie Mellon University, and the robot splurge is the reason that I don't own a car.
In the way that sending machines to Mars makes sense, one of the reasons automation has been so effective is that the distribution of labour is entirely severed. By partnering with machines, we gain capabilities beyond our own limitations. We can already fly, talk to someone on the other side of the planet and cure disease, so what super-human capacities might we invent when we come up with ways for robots to integrate seamlessly into our homes, offices, schools, hospitals or entertainment centres?
For the last decade, I have been a researcher of social robotics. Rather than asking humans to learn a programming language to communicate with our creations, my team and I seek to create robots that grasp enough about human sociability and convention so that they are able to meet us in the middle. And designing robots for people means understanding ourselves. Our brain structure affects whether we interpret motion as aggressive or friendly, alive or inanimate. Our psychology influences our snap judgments of intent. I would not hire a gardener I did not get along with or trust. Similarly, a successful robot must connect with us at a visceral level.
by Heather Knight, Wired | Read more:
Image: Spencer Lowell
